


Triptych: This Tree, It Will Die Without Leaves

by orphan_account



Series: A Basketful of First-Times [10]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Legends: Jedi Apprentice Series - Jude Watson & Dave Wolverton, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy
Genre: Angst and Feels, Bittersweet Ending, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Falling In Love, Fictional Religion & Theology, First Time, Forbidden Love, Force Bond (Star Wars), Gentle Kissing, Gentle Sex, Gentleness, Grief/Mourning, Implied/Referenced Torture, Jedi Code (Star Wars), M/M, Making Love, Master & Padawan Relationship(s), Memories, Non-Linear Narrative, Non-Penetrative Sex, Obi-Wan Kenobi Needs a Hug, Post-Star Wars: The Phantom Menace, Talking To Dead People, Wakes & Funerals
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-28
Updated: 2020-08-16
Packaged: 2021-03-04 21:34:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,604
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25473214
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: He wasn't supposed to take his Master's ashes.Then again, there were a great many things he and Qui-Gon weren't supposed to do."You fall through the treesAnd you pray with your knees on the ground:For the things that you need,With your lust and your greed weighing down.And you weaken your loveAnd you hold it above your head;Success is a song of the heart, not a song of your bed.And we all still die."
Relationships: Qui-Gon Jinn/Obi-Wan Kenobi
Series: A Basketful of First-Times [10]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1876582
Comments: 19
Kudos: 18
Collections: Master Apprentice Archive





	1. The Pyre

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by The Paper Kites' ["Willow Tree March"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8yaVtsPIVVM).
> 
> Not much else to say . . . Oh--except that I've retconned Qui-Gon's cremation to Coruscant / the Temple, since it's always made more sense to me to have it there.
> 
> Comments (of any kind) are ever and always appreciated from the bottom of my heart; thank you so much for reading, and I do hope you enjoy! <3

It’s the midst of the engineered summer on Coruscant, but the air feels cold against Obi-Wan’s skin. It hangs thick, fetid, holding in half-cupped hands the heat of the flames, the stench of burning flesh, the strangling smoke. The pyre is dead, as his Master is dead, and the crowds have vanished into the warmth of the temple, the darkness of night.

All but the little boy who looks up at him with red-rimmed eyes, a shadowed face, open, honest—too-much-so, it seems, for one who’s led a life as his, privy to some evil and sheltered from so much.

Obi-Wan doesn’t know what to say to him, the boy—to Anakin.

And so he simply stands beside the great stone slab which had curtailed the licking tongues of flame that were not hot enough to eat the bones. No fire could. A soft breeze begins to toy its way through the tresses of the ceremonial pergola, through the crumbled-sprung ribs, through the whistling eyesockets of the skull. Beside him, he feels the boy shiver; impulsively he wraps an arm about Anakin’s shoulders, all-too-terribly aware that it’s Qui-Gon’s robe he wears, and Qui-Gon who should be here.

 _Do you doubt the will of the Force?_ He stares at the skull a moment longer, so nearly sure that he can hear his Master’s voice in the breeze, that he can feel a touch along the bond, unutterably tender. _All is as it should be._

The anguished face of his Master as the Sith Lord’s blade was thrust into his gut flashes before him, flesh shadowing the bone in terrible echo, and Obi-Wan clenches his fists, draws a breath, lets go the exhalation as a trickle.

_< It’s not. And I don’t think you’d tell me so. Not now.>_

Silence.

Only silence to meet the currents-thoughts-emotions, the internal maelstrom that Obi-Wan keeps in careful check lest anyone see the cracks, see the light seeping from him, the stolen light, the _Light_ —

A Jedi should have no attachments, should not mourn even a Master’s death—ah, no—should indeed _rejoice_ for those who have become transformed into the Force (luminous, all—and what remains of the crude matter but charred bone and ash-cruder-still?)—

“I thought I might find you here.”

Obi-Wan half-pivots on his heel, instinctively shielding Anakin behind him. Perhaps his last gift, his answer to his Master’s foolishness coursing as cortisol along his veins: where Qui-Gon would bring the young boy to a war, he’ll—

_Never let him come to harm? Whoever would say so is no Master worthy of a Padawan._

But soft, the chiding—soft because he knows it isn’t true, knows Qui-Gon hurt every time Obi-Wan was hurt, but so it was, and so the life of a Jedi Knight beyond the Temple walls (and well-enough within)—

_< Well enough you know I’m not.>_

There’s anger, too, and he doesn’t know what to do with it and swallows it, like so much misery and silence and bile. As if he’s all but swallowed poison, well enough he knows it will come back up to haunt him.

Anakin latches one finger onto his utility belt, and quietly he offers whatever warmth there is in shadowed-cerulean eyes, before gesturing to the figure slipping towards them from the quiet light, the Temple’s warmth, a drop of water fountain-shed.

“This is a friend— _my_ friend,” he murmurs finally, sensing within the boy distress, distrust—not merely of the Mon Calamari but of his own emotions. Anakin is afraid, and frightened of his fear. Frightened of his loss. Frightened of the dreams outheld to him—for dreams and reality are never one-the-same. And so Obi-Wan will not speak to Anakin’s fear—not yet. In time, with training, he will come to understand. But now— “Her name is Bant Eerin.”

“Hello, Anakin.” Bant’s voice is soft; her silver eyes hold something of the Temple’s light, or else they catch the summer stars. She crouches down, carefully cradling something half-wrapped in her robe, offering a webbed-and-sucker-palmed hand.

Anakin frowns a moment, and _there_ —Obi-Wan sees the child, lost, lonely, his whole world turned upside down. A child who’s had no training at the Temple but finds himself suddenly propositioned with a faith and way of life so utterly _alien_ —and not unknown to him his destiny.

Perhaps this world, this Temple full of Light, is more terrifying to him now than Tatooine, the desert, the life of a slave, had ever been. Obi-Wan purses his lips, studying the boy out of the corner of one eye.

“I’m sorry,” Anakin replies slowly; “I don’t mean to stare.” Tentatively he reaches out, tracing his fingers along her palm. “I’ve never seen—I mean—it’s nice to meet you, too.”

Bant’s amusement is a ripple-chime along the Force. “You’re from Tatooine, I hear. A desert world.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“I’m from a planet called Mon Cala. A world of oceans. Can you imagine that?”

“A whole planet of _water_?” Anakin’s eyes are wide; Obi-Wan feels him let go his hold, take a step closer, drawn towards Bant—that gentle silver light within the Force, cool and soothing as the song of tidal sway. “I’ve seen water on Naboo, but . . . nothing like that, ma’am.”

“Perhaps someday you’ll travel there.” She touches his shoulder gently, then glances up toward Obi-Wan before rising to her feet. “I brought you something.”

The bulk beneath her robe is shifted, drawn into the half-light: a lidded vase.

Obi-Wan takes it, struck by the weight, by the polished stone, the shivered echoes of the craftsman’s adze. _Where_ and _How_ come to his tongue, but the sound loosed finds far different measure: “Who—?”

“A gift. From us.”

Carefully he unscrews the lid and glances in—darkness deep enough to swallow the night. Involuntarily his gaze flickers back over one shoulder to the cooled ashes, waiting to dance on a breeze, as is tradition. Do his friends know his heart so clearly? Is it so obvious? (And if to them—who else? How many in the Temple knew their secret and said nothing? For how many is this a gift of grief—and not merely to his Master’s memory? For how many is it a gift to _him_?) He draws a breath, finds it hoarse with a smoke-clogged throat, and for a moment cannot speak.

Yes, for the smoke . . .

“Garen has a shuttle prepped for you. The Temple Guards will be coming soon to take the bones, but—” Bant briefly bows her head, tilting it slightly, salmon skin flashing in the Temple light. She smiles once again at Anakin, gathering the gravity of the moment, the essence of time. “Come with me, young one. We have food and a sleep-couch waiting.”

Anakin sways wearily a moment, tempted, uncertain. “But Obi-Wan—sir?—”

“Bant will take good care of you. She’s one of my oldest friends—you’ll be safe with her, Anakin. I promise.” Obi-Wan lets his fingertips tap a rhythm along the urn; a kindling breeze picks up, whispering half-whistles, and a sense of urgency overtakes him—restlessness—as if some echo of the Living Force that kept Qui-Gon near-perpetually in motion.

If he is to do this—

“Give Garen my thanks. And I—tell the Council that I will accept whatever discipline they see fit to give me. Tell them I’ll have a comlink.” Bant nods, and Obi-Wan manages, at last, a look for the boy that’s a half-shattered window into his own grief, hoping that Anakin might someday understand. “Anakin. I’ll be back within a few days, and then—”

_Then, Qui-Gon, I live the promise I made you. Then this boy becomes my Padawan. Then my head won’t be so silent—but it won’t be you. Force. It won’t be you._

“In the meantime, pay attention to the Masters. Listen to Bant; do what she tells you.”

“Yes, sir. But where—”

“Come now.” Bant holds out her robe like a shroud and Anakin falls into its shadow—trusting in Obi-Wan, trusting his friend, trusting in the inexorable will of the Force that has swept him into such a beautiful, terrible life. Trusting with the weariness of a child—somehow, still—full of innocence, naiveté. Together, the Mon Calamari and the young boy from a desert world step out from the shadowed night, into the light of the Temple.

Obi-Wan sets the lid to the urn at his feet, then turns with trembling hands to race the whistling wind.


	2. The Vigil

The shuttle is swift and sleek, a seed spat through Coruscant’s atmosphere, guided by Obi-Wan’s steady hands and practiced eye along the shifting currents of sky-traffic. Orbital control IDs the ship as originating from the Temple, ask his name, no more—and there, then, the same night that fell over the city-planet swallows him: the darkness and the stars—

And then the stars are struck to screaming streaks and the hyperdrive whines and Obi-Wan leans back in the cramped, single-man cockpit, slipping from his harness, needing to move and having nowhere. A narrow aisle that’s little more than four paces; a bulkhead full of rations, a ’fresher, a half-passable bunk.

Carefully he gathers his robe—his Master’s robe—and the urn into his arms, swaddled and stowed beneath the plasteel framework of the bunk. Shucking his boots, Obi-Wan settles himself with his back against the wall, knowing he won’t sleep.

He cradles the urn in his lap, a finite weight, even in the knowledge that most of the ash is wood and there’s very little of Qui-Gon’s body left—except the bones.

* * *

_It’s been a year. A year since war tore itself across the small moon-colony of Érilo, the settlers digging in their heels against the inexorable sway of the planetary government below—the planet that all but seemed to devour the sky. There is no treaty, no peace, and Érilo is gone. Word’s reached the Temple. The colony’s no more._

_And Obi-Wan, twenty-three years old and more frightened than his training ought allow, sinks into the night and begs the Force for patience, for guidance, for Light. He knows that a team of Consulars was sent in a last-gasp effort to negotiate some form of peace—but also, should the inevitable come, to barter for his Master's life. What use more is there for a prisoner of war if there_ is _no war?_

_He has touched the bond often, whisper-asking, pleading, for Qui-Gon to give some sign of his presence. Nothing. Nothing has reached him for all of a year, though he hasn’t felt what he’s sure he’d feel if—_

_And so he knows that Qui-Gon is alive; this hope has been enough to sustain him, however terrible and dark the silence._

_And now word has come that the Consulars return. The death of the colony must be a heavy weight indeed within their breasts. The echoes have been screaming through the Force for days, as do the echoes of all wars. This one is no different—_

_Except that the Consulars do not return alone._

_Obi-Wan has lain awake all night, searching in the bond, reaching out, calling—all cerulean Light, seeking for some trace of the energy he knows so well, the verdant strength of his Master, inexorable, full, replete with joy and life and—_

_Footsteps echo on the stone-strewn floor and he blinks through a night blazing with Coruscanti light (city-light that never sleeps) and he lifts his head and over-weary eyes can make out only shadows and the Force is still and silent like a grave and uncertain-screaming, tremor-ridden agony rolls back to him, enough to catch his breath somewhere in his throat._

_Nearer come the steps, stiff-unnatural gait on swollen joints. Suffering so long that mercy and respite are dreams._

_Obi-Wan sits up and helps the robed figure painfully crawl onto his sleep-couch. A skeleton swathed in a robe. Bacta-soaked bandages and cloth can do nothing at all to hide the skin stretched brittle-taut over the bones, the body shivering convulsively. The silvered-copper hair that he’d so long hoped to tangle in his hands is dead. Within the Force there is so little life—but_ life _—_

<I thought they’d . . . taken you . . . from me . . . >

_Wrenched-hoarse words; they crawl up Obi-Wan’s spine. A hand in which he can trace every bone takes his, kneading the flesh, the sparring-won scars, tracing the tendons, over and over: committing it to memory, or revisiting the memory, or finding in wonder that the dreamed-of-thing is inexplicably real._

_Qui-Gon lays his head on Obi-Wan’s lap: relief, Light, warmth, all words-and-truths-unspoken-of passing there between them, endless and relentless in ways that neither understands—such a terrible thing, the fear of loss. Such a terrible thing, the silence and the breaking-of._

_Qui-Gon never lets go of Obi-Wan’s hand, but eventually sleeps._

_And while his Master’s emaciated body gathers unto itself once again its flesh and strength, while his shattered mind finds again its peace—for so many months and then a year and afterwards—night after night, it’s the same._

* * *

_< When I told the Council you’d been captured and they ordered me back to the Temple—I thought—I thought you’d die, were dead. I thought . . . the silence . . . _> Obi-Wan pauses, realizing he’s begun subconsciously to stroke the urn in the same way that he’d stroked his Master’s cheek, head cradled there within his lap. _< And now you’re dead and I never knew what silence was.>_

He’d been helpless to disobey the Council’s mandate. Helpless to do anything about the forcefield. Helpless as Qui-Gon, his Master—the man he loved despite himself, the man the Force itself seemed to bind to him in spirit—ah—could do naught but face the Darkness all alone: such a fragile vessel of the Light.

And what, then, all those years ago or all of days—what then was Obi-Wan to do when all was said and done but cradle Qui-Gon’s head and weep?

* * *

_A year and then-some turns and Obi-Wan is twenty-four and his Master still visits his sleep-couch. Not-so-often, now, but on the nights the Darkness has come to toy with Qui-Gon’s mind, and on the nights when the memory of silence runs deep. Qui-Gon has never spoken of what happened during the year on Érilo, and Obi-Wan has never asked. Nor does he ever deign it prudent to tell his Master of how leaving him had been as good as tearing his spirit from his body, leaving him a ghost. After all—what is such paltry, romantic blasphemy compared to horrors unspoken but for the leeched-gasping pleas of Qui-Gon’s spirit there along the bond, gripped in relived nightmare—when all composure’s struck and scattered? To the skeleton that crawled into his sleep-couch, to the fresh-raised scars?_

_Perhaps it doesn’t matter. Perhaps they both are ghosts._

_Qui-Gon lays one night with his head on Obi-Wan’s chest, stroking his hands, picking up again the litany that’s become a wonder all itself, some cathartic piece of this sacrosanct ritual of theirs:_ <I thought they’d taken you from me.>

_Obi-Wan—lulled by his Master’s propinquity and warmth, the soft-comfort and relief at the flesh and vitality given back unto his body and bones—slips into twilit Light, seeking out the verdant energy of the man he holds: whose strength is at once inviolable and oh-so-fragile: enfolding it within himself: protective, chaste, relentless._

_Sometimes—some nights and sun-struck days—they find each other in half-caught gazes, shadowed glances, tittering bursts of energy, unfettered, brighter than a thousand suns, brighter than the Light._

_He has never asked Qui-Gon what happened on Érilo. But for moments such as those and this—_

<They didn’t take you from me,> _he answers finally, brushing stray strands of hair grown lush again back from Qui-Gon’s face._ <Here I am, Master.>

 _The older man is quiet for such a long time that Obi-Wan half-settles himself into sleep, sure that Qui-Gon’s done the same. But then his Master all but whispers through the bond,_ <You, my Padawan. You were what saw me through Érilo.>

_What answer can he give to that? He, a Padawan? He, who has only half-plumbed the depths of his feelings for his Master—the intermingling desire, awe, the fear of loss—profound, profane? What else could this be but love? No Jedi should—_

_But every time he offers these wild-things into the Light, it’s the Force which bears them back to him. He can feel it, sense it, finding peaceful refrain in the harried echoes of the flesh._

_But what answer can he give?_

_He swallows, looking down upon his Master’s face, and says what he doesn’t mean—but should, for he is not simply vessel of the Light but servant. And he says what he should (and doesn’t mean) because his body understands too-well where this closeness of theirs, this ritual, will lead someday and he can feel himself beginning to grow hard and—_

<The Force was what sustained you, Master.>

_“No—” Qui-Gon catches himself, the word hoarse and threaded with such urgency that Obi-Wan is sure that everyone in the Temple must feel its currents through the Force. The bristle of his beard, the chapped-softness of his lips, all but burn against Obi-Wan’s knuckles, waxed white and trembling. Indigo eyes are dark and deep and just as he’s wrapped his energy around Qui-Gon, oh, in kind those eyes, that verdant light-within-the-Light, reaches for him, soothing-offering—_

_Even as his Master stands, decisively steps back, his body full and hale and whole: his face unreadable, both tranquil and austere: the muscles of his shoulders trailing, corded, down his arms and into the very fine-bones of his hands strung taut—but oh, so still, so_ quiet _, the tension; the sway of his velvet-skinned cock cast in Coruscanti night-light._

 _Even as Obi-Wan’s body cries out at the cold, cries out at the_ loss _; even as he must bite his lip and bind his heart to keep from asking_ Stay.

* * *

The word is thick and heavy. Obi-Wan opens his eyes, takes in the shuttle’s runner lights, takes in the audible silence: no chime yet, warning of the approach to the coordinates he’d entered. The word presses on his brain, his chest, his throat; he takes stock of his body, of the leaden weariness, the press of the urn against him, the weight of his hands. He considers, too, the autonomic stiffness of his cock wrought by the course of sleep. He will not stoop so low as to consider it desire now, least of all at his Master’s memory, least of all when he’s never touched himself and now and never will.

He draws a breath of stale, cold air and holds it, lets it go. He stares down at the urn, counting the marks of the adze. He _listens_ to the stone and can feel its joy as it was pounded and chiseled and shaped. He can feel the honor of the artisan with calloused hands. He can feel, too, in the ash—ah—he can feel the traces of the wood: the flesh of a tree given to death and in flame was life again, however brief.

He cannot feel his Master.

_< You told me it was I who got you through Érilo. I told you it was the Force. And now—now where are you, Master? They say there is no death. They say that all who die become transformed into the Force that binds all things and that the Force will—ah—but I . . . >_

Convulsively his hands tighten. For a moment, brief as spark, elusive as smoke, he holds no urn.

_< I don’t feel you, Master.>_

Again he breathes: inhale, ten-count, exhale, struggling for rhythm, for some measure to this path his life has taken. The stone and the wood are small comforts indeed against the cold, against the loss. And there, almost against his will, the tremulous whisper-word, the plea, he couldn't bring himself to say.

_<. . . Stay.>_


	3. The Bower And Grave

Obi-Wan clutches the urn to his chest. The air is thick with echoes of smoke; ash-of-all-shades dusts his boots, catches the hem of his Master’s robe; he looks around and the white-blotted sky is too _big_ , sliced and scarred ragged with charred-skeletal trees. He minds where he steps; gleaming-black and calcified-white beneath his feet are creature-bones; sometimes the bloated husks of bodies.

He considers why he set the shuttle here. The fire could not have destroyed _everything_ —surely there is still some green here, still some life, far beyond his line of sight, cracked far-too-wide. But the Force had whispered _Here_ , and he’d all but heard the echoed whisper of his Master’s voice—and so—

 _Here_ , to this place he’d held so tenderly in memory— _here_ , as it turns out, returning to a wasteland.

But here it is—it was. He glances up into the bitter sky, finding himself at the tangled roots of two knotted trees, twined side-by-side. Scorched and barren, he’d recognize them anywhere.

* * *

_This is stolen time._

_Obi-Wan had known it since his Master had leaned over his shoulder and tapped in a set of unknown coordinates: since the shuttle’s computer hummed acquiescence and all there was to do was wait. They had meditated in the semi-darkness, the vague trailing-beaded runner-lights. The Force between them was flickering-bright, but from Qui-Gon came something intangible—distant, darker—_ still _, as utterly as stone. Obi-Wan had known better than to reach for the bond, even with cupped hands, with offering, with all the quiet promise-words gathered truth between them._

_This is stolen time._

_Obi-Wan knows it, too, as now he sets the shuttle down, wide-eyed: Qui-Gon leads him with self-assured grace, quiet mystery,_ himself _the mystery and well-enough content and miserable by turn—that meager-threaded darkness, ah . . ._

_The world is beautiful: binary suns slope down through canopied trees in vermilion spear-shades, slicing the sky into ribbons. The mosslike grass beneath their boots is thick and sprightly and soft. From low-slung foliage, glitter-bright eyes gleam out at them. The Force is full of hard life and uncomplicated laughter: coitus, birth, death: the balanced-dance, self-offering._

* * *

This is stolen time.

If Obi-Wan closes his eyes, he can almost see it as it was. But something—the silence—the eerie lowing wind through whatever barren branches cling to standing stalk-trunks—the air thick with the memory of smoke—all draw him back. This verdant planet will robe itself again in splendor and its jewel-eyed denizens of fur and fang will rebirth themselves. In time. But not yet now.

He kneels at the foot of the tree, ash and soot staining his tunic, trousers, mottling his hands. The roots, then, where, from what seems like another man’s lifetime, there comes the memory of Qui-Gon, sitting as the suns sloped down into the evening velvet-depth, a silhouette. Unconsciously his hands find measure and rhythm, even as he digs and smells at last rich soil and his fingers dance through gnarled rootwood. That sacred mystery, unseen—oh, even in passing to behold it is to become beholden.

* * *

<I thought they’d taken you from me.>

_They sit side-by-side, beneath two knotted trees. The moss-ground is soft; the roots seem to cradle them, rough but not unkind. Obi-Wan lets his head tip back against the trunk of the tree vaulted there above him, staring up into the deep-blooded sky, fringed in darkness now. The bond itself is like that—quiet-eddied Light and trails of Darkness, jutting up like stones above the water. He can feel the curve of his Master’s knee, pressed against his own. The powerful presence and breadth._

_He considers, for a moment, their watchword. Here he is, always. But something else skips across his mind, something else that he offers as a ripple, nothing more._ <The Council?>

<Yes . . . and no.>

 _Qui-Gon stands, holds out a hand,_ Be still _, and in the gathering dusk begins to undress. The act, it seems to Obi-Wan, is a shedding of shields, of masks. He dares not, cannot, consider Qui-Gon’s bodily nakedness for what it is or give a moment’s credence to the instinctive sharp-heat stiffening of his cock, the reflexive tensing of his muscles. They know each other too tenderly for that._

_Nearer, then, his Master’s form, all hard shadows and slivered-dying suns splayed across the planes, the ridges of bones and scars, the flexing tendons and the fine-valleyed skin, thick-tressed hair caught alight. Qui-Gon’s hands are soft as they settle knee-to-knee, tracing patterns there against his own: as Obi-Wan looks into his Master’s face and can read so little that it frightens him._

_But in their secret, sacred ritual there’s found, at last, some comfort._

_And with the manner of something half-constrained and spinning wildly and lost, he feels Qui-Gon pour into the bond, as if into Obi-Wan’s cupped hands, the memories of Érilo._

* * *

Obi-Wan stares into the pitiable hole for a long time, examining his hands: smeared with ash, soil caked beneath his fingernails. He glances at the urn, almost dares not touch it. He is too dirty, too flawed, too fragile. But he must.

* * *

Here _, whispers a mottled patch of skin beneath the young man’s fingertips—the touch that Qui-Gon guides with such terrible finality, such quietude, over his own body—_ here there was fire and pain that became brighter than the Light.

And here _, add a chorus of hypertrophic scars, laced into a sickly pattern of premeditation,_ here were blunt blades.

Here _, the temples mourn,_ was rubbed conductant and electrodes stuck. Here was bottled lightning. Here was lies-turned-truth—sickness, stirring sickness of the mind. They took you, took you, took you—

Drugs and Dark science and silence! _cry the veins and blood-coursing, and Obi-Wan can feel his own body react in kind, the sway of the midichlorians caught in a tempered terror-stricken song—what can possibly silence the Force? What can cut off a man from all that he is?_

Here _, moans the stomach beneath the soft-fleshed belly,_ here there was hunger. Here we ate at ourselves until we could do nothing but suck on the bones. Here there was hunger and sometimes-given-food but it was scarce and rot and oil-slick.

Here _, whimper the bowels, still prone to writhing many mornings yet,_ because of their torture-food there was indignity.

 _And_ Here _and_ Here _and_ Here _and_

—thought they’d taken you from me— _the quietest, the confession of the sac cupped in the palm of his hand, warm and coarse-haired, life-heavy—and at his wrist, pulse-beating, resting the head of the sacred root. The most secret song of all. Scars raking over the tender sac-skin, carving, sharp. Someone with sadistic skill: again and again the threat laid in rivulets of blood, in millimeters—_

<I would not mind being a gelding.> _Qui-Gon, weeping, almost laughs. Obi-Wan fumbles through the fallen darkness, now, searching with his free hand for his Master’s cheek. Qui-Gon’s touch meets his, and together they catch in bearded bristle-brush a sluggish tear._ <I would not mind. But for you, my Padawan, my— Every time they drew the knife I thought—I feared—>

_Between them both the palms that cradle Qui-Gon’s scrotum caress the skin and Obi-Wan bows his head and shifts his hand and upwards, then, and his Master makes no move to stop him and he swallows in a throat so terribly tight that he wonders if he can even draw a breath without a sob to crack his lips._

_They have both known over the past few years it isn’t so—but oh—but oh—but knowing now—_

_Qui-Gon’s cock is heavy and warm and hard in his hand. Guided by instinct in the darkness he runs his fingertips along the shaft, curling at the head, drawing back the delicate foreskin, catching the precum that beads and spills over his thumb, weeping for the immensity of what has been, what is._

* * *

Obi-Wan hates that his hands are dirty.

Carefully he spills the ashes first, mixing them with the soil. He fishes through the pocket sewn into his tunic—the familiar weight of the river-stone—until his fingers tangle with the frayed tresses of his braid. The blade had been green, like his Master’s—but it was Yoda’s—

How he’d closed his eyes then, unable to look, unable to bear the light or the smell of singed hair or the subtle weight that was gone. All before he had to stand and hold his head high and walk with stoic visage, deference, to light his Master’s pyre.

This into the urn he offers, the feeble strands of hair that Qui-Gon had taken to plaiting every morning, to carefully carding through his fingers every night.

He reaches for the lightsaber at his hip, that weight more terrible to bear than the absence of his braid or the settling of Qui-Gon’s robe across his shoulders. And for a moment he hesitates, uncertain, and then wills himself into the Force, into the hilt, the crystal, the components, letting himself run as water through the work of his Master’s spirit—ah—it was nothing less, no Jedi’s weapon _could_ be less, could be mere act of hand—

And carefully before him the hilt comes undone, and in one hand he holds a quiet life-bright crystal. In the other, nothing more than metal and components: the facsimile of a lightsaber, but a lightsaber no more. He hooks the empty hilt onto his belt; he will return it to the Temple and let the Council do with it as they wish. The crystal—

He holds it close to his heart for a long moment, feeling it whisper to him through the Force, such precious Light, such an offering, an echoed memory of Qui-Gon—

He doesn’t want to let it go.

But must.

Around him the light has deepened, turned burnished-burnt orange-bronze, flattening into sickly shades as night wears on and smoke still chokeholds the horizon. He doesn’t have much left of this sacred stolen time, and so—

* * *

_He kisses Qui-Gon everywhere, and in echo his Master’s fingertips trace strung patterns across his skin: bloomed iterations of the familiarities their hands have known for years. The moss is soft, forgiving; the tree-branches tangled there above their heads blot out the stars, the thick-rustled foliage, the quiet stirrings of the night-creatures. Otherwise there is no sound, and the Force is still, and the darkness enfolds them, promising to keep their secret._

_Unspoken are the other truths—the truths of Darkness: the year lived in, the night returned, all the time-between—and now it seems fitting that they exorcise those ghosts as well in this Light-given night, this sacred-wild._

_His Master had, in raw-wrought desperation, cum long before he’d finished whispering his kisses everywhere—all the scars and valleys and soft-fleshed places, along the tracks of dried tears and there at the head of Qui-Gon’s cock (though the taste of seed against his lips had brought a wrinkle to his nose). But even now his Master shifts and whimpers pleasure and is stiffening again and his energy is so virile-bright that it hurts Obi-Wan to look too closely, even through the tempered knowing of the bond._

_But he_ aches _—_

 _And at last the moss is soft against his back and he can sense the immensity of Qui-Gon’s form beside him, can feel the nudging, musk-trailed lilt of his Master’s cock—oh, it sends a shudder through him. And Qui-Gon’s lips and touch are everywhere and it’s all Light blasting the night into brightness and scattering into a billion stars and_ <Oh, Padawan—oh, love—> _is poured across the bond, again, again, like Qui-Gon’s lovecries and Obi-Wan’s own lips play glossolalia and some remnant of a long-dead tongue—_ “Master—!”— _and instinctively he fumbles into the darkness and_ reaches _and Qui-Gon thrusts into his questing grip with tender ferity and so soft and tender is his Master’s touch along his cock that the Light that blew the night apart seeps into his spirit, into his root_ yes _and his spirit and his flesh and he and Qui-Gon both are wrested-scattered into more than stars and utter_ brightness _, shudder-hard-cocked-spurted-heat-seed-_ blessed _and Obi-Wan cries out, again, again, with Qui-Gon’s voice in echo, something sacrosanct unto the dark._

* * *

He strokes the mound of ashen soil for a moment, tenderly as if his Master’s skin, and his body shudders in blasphemous ecstatic-memory, his cock grown hard, the _need_ flared bright enough to make him gasp aloud because, if he reaches, he can feel echoes of _that_ , too, imprinted here within the living Force—the both of them. But now there is silence—

He cannot even pretend to hear his Master anymore.

And he shudders for the cold: the night’s deep-fallen now. He glances up above and sees but half-wrought stars, forcing themselves against the remnant, widespread plume of smoke. He closes his eyes, remembering when it was verdant life-leaves playing with those very stars . . .

The soil, the ashes: buried in them the robe wrapped around the urn, and in the urn’s belly rest the crystal and the braid. More than he should give, he knows, but they are everything and leave him feeling hollow, empty. As a Jedi should be. A vessel filled only with the Light, or so he knows he’ll be in time—

He stands, swaying, teeth clenched as the fabric of his trousers plays with his heated flesh; his body betrays him and _begs_ and he shakes his head, just shakes his head and turns away into the shadowed night, back to the shuttle: seeking the sky far darker still and the stars rekindled-bright. The ache, the need, will ease in time, if only to come haunting him. He is no fool.

Sharp-rising comes a whistling wind, playing through the charred-trunked leaveless trees, the bones, scattering the ashes.

**Author's Note:**

> **Happily tackling first-time prompts. Toss me some, if you like!**


End file.
